The term ‘mommy porn’ has recently been added to the Collins online dictionary, (along with amazeballs and floordrobe - which is “a pile of clothes left on the floor of a room.” Great word!)
Mommy porn is defined as “a sexist, patronizing term to describe erotica enjoyed by millions of women who dare to be both mothers and sexual beings”.
I think it’s a pretty fair definition. FSOG, (you know you’ve arrived when you have your own acronym,) the book that inspired the genre, is after all only Pretty Woman with Whips. So what is the fuss really all about?
Many of the diatribes launched against FSOG seem to have been aimed at whether women SHOULD read it and whether women SHOULD like it.
No one asked that question about the The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy where the sex was truly dark and disturbing, not like the vanilla between Edward and Bella - I mean Anna and Christian.
Women who have read this book and talked to me about it seem almost apologetic. ‘I read this really trashy book, and I absolutely hated all three of them.’
‘Wait a minute, if you hated the first one, why did you read all three?’
One said she thought it would get better. Another just had to see what would happen. But she was now so embarrassed admitting that she had read such a trashy book, she said. And so badly written!
Where do all these ‘shoulds’ come from? And why apologize for reading it? Because of the sex or because of the writing?
If it was well written would it have been okay to read it?
Because it seems that, traditionally, women have been embarrassed about reading sex. But sales of erotic fiction have apparently been growing over the last five years thanks to the digital revolution. With a Kindle you don’t have to take your ‘mommy porn’ home in a brown paper bag or have someone else see what you’re reading on the train; technology can now bypass shame.
It is now clear that women like sexual content and not just gauzy romance; they want access to certain thrills that had previously been the preserve of men. (Just not as banal!)
Sex is now like tennis; the girls are now making much more noise than the guys.
Apparently you can’t volunteer for a school fund raiser these days without having a conversation about lubricants. Women help out at canteen and get recommendations from each other about bondage gear. They stare at the playground equipment and speculate.
I personally believe the real difference is not the BDSM in FSOG (Acronyms … OMG!) - which has been flogged to death anyway over the last couple of decades, excuse the pun - but that women themselves are now talking about graphic sex.
This is what’s new; as some of the commenters on my previous blog have pointed out all that’s different - or even faintly novel - about FSOG is that it has become cool to read it. The fuss is not about the book but the Zeitgeist; it’s finally been acknowledged that married women have fantasies about kinky sex.
That’s the shock - which should be no shock at all - not the book, which is representative of one of the best selling and most enduring genres in the world: erotic romance.
As if poor Rick Santorum didn’t have enough to fret over!
It seems that there’s a subtext that says when women have babies they stop being sexual creatures. You cannot have children and still be dirty! (Maybe too tired or not have enough time for sex - but that’s a different story.)
I would contend that this whole phenomenon is not about writing but about sexual politics.
This is still a society where men who sleep around are players and their female counterparts are sluts. Just how liberated are women really in a country where the Hyde Amendment forces them to bear children conceived in rape, where a six-time Congressman can claim that a woman’s body is capable of preventing pregnancy in cases of “legitimate rape.”
So it’s perhaps not about whether the book is good or not. It’s timing; it’s a statement. If you read it, it says you’re prepared to stand up for your own sexuality.
Even though the book is not about that.
Not that any of this makes life easier for men, who are expected to be comfortable in their role of sexual aggressors, even as times change. As these guys in the video discovered, it’s all a bit confusing.
For them the whole phenomenon is, like, amazeballs.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh41eCcyU_8&w=560&h=315]
Excellent post.
And I hate the term “mommy porn”.
Me too!
Excuse me while I try to find my birth certificate because i am convinced I am not of this earth. Or was it all those formativce years at Sunday School. I don’t like porn, I don’t like filth (may I confess that I read one page of Martina Cole and put the book down at once - but hubby reads them all - and I have no desire to read the ‘Grey’ book - but again hubby does! I wonder if I need analysing?
There are many gifts in our livdes which are glorious if enjoyed properly and used properly 9food - but don’t ingest poison; drinking p- but don’t drink the weed killer; eroitica love wonderful but don’t use violence, but I reckon today the way is blurred and no clear edges so we fall off. So i stay here on my mountain wondering if I have lost my way, or everyone else has! Hopefully i WAS of venus, but it seems to me that a lot of women are more of MARS, and make war and not enoughlove. Not as I said, I am off on that search, just to discover who I really am and from where.
As I said in the post, Marion, I don’t think the book is that pornographic or even disturbing - and certainly not compared to Nabokov or Roth or even DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s lover which was prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act in Britain in 1960. (In which the chief prosecutor, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, famously asked the jury if it were the kind of book “you would wish your wife or servants to read”.) I think the hype surrounding it, and why it has arisen right now, is far more interesting.
Hey Colin, great thought provoking post. I haven’t read FSOG but I sure have no problem with sexuality, expressed or otherwise. Certainly wouldn’t be ashamed if I had read it, and if it leads more women to embrace themselves further, where’s the bad?
Folks, if you don’t like it, don’t read it. If you want to, or if you have read it, Say so, it’s no big deal at all.
My goal, Prudence: to have someoone call my book by its acronynm! Then I’ll know I’ve arrived!
I don’t think women are embarrassed at all by it. Romance novels have been the best selling genre for decades. My book club loves the sexy time in books! Hahaha! (embarrassed laughter)
Exactly, Susie. I think the video said it all!
I have read neither the Twilight trilogy nor FSOG, nor do I intend to. I can smell swill from far away. I did devour the “Girl With…” Trilogy and yes, the sex was disturbing. Those books were dealing more with power. Although American, I have European sensibilities and do know that women are subjugated in this society and are still asking for permission to acknowledge and celebrate what has always been theirs from birth. Women are on this “pedestal,” through male sufferance and if they step out of that careful boundary which is usually bolstered with the addition of children, that all goes away.
The fact that EVERYONE seems to be confused now seems to me to be because men are no longer sure of their own roles in this mummery. In part, I think, we’ve also made this attempt to “shield” the “fairer sex” from rough language, thought and deed. Is it any wonder the men are wondering what in the hell is wrong with the other half? It’s really not about the writing. I knew from the start the writing would suck. It’s amazing (Amazeball!) how one can tell from the press releases that the book is a dog. Not to digress, but that is part of the dialog.
Anyway, I threw enough ideas at you, Colin. I love your writing and I love reading what you have to say. I learned a bunch here today. Thanks! Mary.
Mary thanks for commenting, and I’m glad what I said sparked with you. The thing I love most about this blog is that I get comments like yours and get an idea what other people are thinking too. I was interested in what you said about the actual writing in FSOG which does raise the point: is there any point to good writing? Maybe in another post …
Hmm. Mommy porn. Yeah, the term sucks. What do I think of that genre? To me it’s like having PMS-related chocolate cravings, and being given a choice. Look at a picture of a brownie…or eat a brownie. Porn vs sex? No contest there. The stuff FSOG is made of? All I’d have to say to most of that is riding crop or whip for me = garden shears for the soon-to-be castrated guy.
It is amazing though, how a lot of women have gone nuts over this book. It’s sad to think what their lives must have been like to get so worked up over something like this. I think they need to make some changes in their lives.
Still, its success has been phenomenal, so it bears a closer look to understand why. Almost everyone I know who has read it has sort of been abashed about it in the way they never would if it had been, say, Lolita or Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which as I pointed out, is truly hardcore in places. I think it’s worth being curious about …
For what it’s worth, my wife found FSOG disturbing because of how terrible the writing was, not because of the silly sex.